THAILAND: How to Sell 'Sustainable Reporting'

By Lynette Lee Corporal

BANGKOK, Oct 30 (Asia Media Forum) — As environmental issues become more 'trendy', environmental journalists are hard pressed to be more creative in selling green stories to the public.

   The media have to contend with a complicated maze of challenges in getting their stories to the grassroots level where it matters the most, journalists said at a two-day media workshop organised by the United Nations Environment Programme here on ‘Sustainable Development: A Viable Goal?’ that ended Tuesday.

   "[The topic of] environment has become too 'sexy'. It's time to go to the other direction and make sure that environment stories are seen for what they are," said Kunda Dixit, editor and publisher of ‘Nepali Times’.

    Environmental stories, Dixit added, need not be separated from the two major issues that affect our daily lives -- politics and economics. "Journalists need to be clever and be able to package their stories that go with economic and political stories," he added.

   For Singapore's 'Straits Times' correspondent Nirmal Ghosh, breaking out of the 'environment reporter' image is a must if a journalist wants to be heard and understood.  "It is important for us to realise that environmental issues are going to be decided by politicians and economists at the end of the day," he said.

   But more than this, audiences should be able to relate to — and not feel drowned by abstractions around— the phrase ‘sustainable development’. As it is, says Ghosh, the phrase alone is enough to alienate readers.

   "The use of the word 'environment' is too amorphous," commented 'green lawyer' Antonio Oposa Jr from the Philippines. "The public want to deal with everyday things. Global environment is an alien concept. We should make environment relevant to the public."

SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY

   Taking these complex issues and transforming them into simple and relevant ones that people can identify with is quite a challenge, said Ghosh.

   "We tend to overestimate our readers. If you look at readers' comments in newspapers, you'll note that most readers are not very worldly, and the level of discourse  is quite low still. We need to simplify issues, which relate first to the local level rather than current global issues,"  Ghosh explained.

   "If you don't see clear and present danger, and it's not going to kill you instantly, it's a non-issue" for many audiences, he added. The public, after all, increasingly has a shorter attention span and is deluged with competing sources of information.

   India Abroad News Service assistant editor Joydeep Gupta stressed the importance of 'sustainability' and consistency in reporting environmental topics.

    "We write about best practices stories and say, 'Oh, wow!', and that's it," said Joydeep, who has been reporting on the environment for the last 24 years.

   He emphasised the need for accurate and relevant statistics so that people can understand, sit up and take notice. "Give us the statistics with which we can catch the attention of the readers," he said.

FIGURES BEHIND THE STORY

   The world of sustainable development is filled with conflicting — and thus, confusing — figures coming from different sources.

   According to Thailand's Dr Chaiyod Bunyagidj, this is because different groups at the local, regional and national levels have different ways of collecting data.

   "While there is a marked increase in the capacity of stakeholders in the region, including the media, data generation is still a challenge. There are still 'missing links' somewhere in data gathering and generation and this is the reason why we sometimes get conflicting numbers. It's not really a matter of data being incorrect but about having incomplete information," the vice president of the non-government Thailand Environment Institute said in an interview.

   Dr Subrato Sinha, environment affairs officer of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Asia-Pacific office, agreed: "There is a lack of investment in data generation" especially on sustainable development issues.

   Compounding the problem are three types of people, according to Development Alternatives India president George Varughese. "There are the experts, the shy ones who only know how to talk to themselves. Then there are the NGOs, who prefer to sensationalise or give some gloom and doom stories. And then there is the government, which is not allowed to talk," said the head of the non-profit organisation working to promote large-scale sustainable livelihood.

   Freelance Pakistani journalist Zofeen Ebrahim conceded that it is a challenge to compete for space with other issues in the news, but “if it's a good story, it always gets picked up".

   At the same time, there are some challenges to hurdle. "Sometimes you do a story about best practices from NGOs but the editors think that the story is promoting the NGO rather than the best practices," she said.

   The point is, said Sri Lankan journalist Dilrukshi Handunnetti, "writing about day-to-day problems, such as health and livelihoods", and connecting it with environmental stories, sustainable development in particular, is a sure way to make people respond heartily.

   Other ways to make people listen up and listen good? Ghosh gives another tip. "Blog about it, especially the stuff that does not get into your paper. Promote your own work and it will start a chain where other people will pick it up and talk about it." (END/IPSAP/LLC/JS/301008)